Optimove’s 2026 research found 72% of U.S. shoppers now use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for shopping ideas or gift recommendations, and nearly half do so regularly.
New research from McKinsey confirms the shift is global. Its survey of roughly 21,000 consumers across 11 markets, published this week, found that more than half of consumers worldwide now use AI to shop.
That alone would be a major shift in how people discover products. But AI is no longer just helping people decide what to buy. Increasingly, it’s doing the buying.
In the U.S., the share of AI users who completed a purchase directly through an AI tool rose from 10% to 17% in a single year, a 70% jump, according to McKinsey. And between 21% and 30% of AI users in the top categories say they’re willing to let AI complete a purchase for them, about 1.5 times as many as already have.
This holiday season, AI agents like Muse and Alexa for Shopping will place orders on behalf of millions of people. For marketers, that raises a question the industry hasn’t had to answer before: How do you build a relationship with a customer when the buyer isn’t human?
The front door has moved
For two decades, marketing was organized around a predictable sequence. A shopper searched, saw an ad, visited the site, browsed, compared, and bought. Every step was a chance to make an impression.
AI compresses that sequence into a single request. Shoppers say the main appeal is less effort: 81% of AI users told McKinsey that AI does a good job narrowing their choices. AI search is now 3.2 times more likely than traditional search to be ranked the more influential source in a purchase decision.
The agent doesn’t see your ads. It doesn’t remember your brand. When it’s time to buy again, it simply shops again.
That means many shoppers will meet your brand for the first time after the purchase has already happened.
The moment of truth is now after the sale
The scale of that opportunity is largest at the holiday peak. Optimove data covering more than 5.5 million customers across leading ecommerce brands shows new customers jumped 593% on Black Friday 2025 compared with an average day, and 404% on Cyber Monday. Nearly half of shoppers, 47%, say they plan to try new brands this season.
That is an enormous wave of first purchases. More of them will arrive through an agent, from people who have never heard from you before.
So the most important question for a marketer is no longer just “How do I get chosen?” It’s “Once I’m chosen, can I find the person behind the purchase, and give them a reason to come back?”
The relationship is built in the moments that follow the transaction: the order confirmation, the welcome journey, the first product recommendation, the next visit. Each of those is now the first real conversation a brand has with a new customer. Each one has to feel meant for that specific person.
Recognize the customer, not just the order
Finding the shopper means connecting every signal you have, including a purchase an agent made, to a real person with a history, preferences, and a likely next need.
Returning customers make the point. Optimove’s data shows active returning customers rose 359% on Black Friday, but orders rose 290%. Many came back without buying right away. A shopper who has bought running shoes three times might be restocking, or might be browsing outdoor jackets for the first time. Those are two different customers in that moment, and they need two different responses.
Now multiply that by every shopper, across every channel, during the busiest week of the year. No team can do that by hand. It takes real-time data and AI decisioning that reads each customer’s latest action alongside their history and chooses the right message, offer, channel, and timing for each one.
Protect the relationship data
McKinsey makes a distinction that every marketer should take to heart. Product information, pricing, and inventory should be widely available so agents can recommend and transact. But customer information, purchase and behavioral history, and loyalty data are assets that require greater protection.
Put simply: the agent gets your catalog. You keep the relationship.
That relationship is the one thing an AI agent can’t replicate, and it’s the one thing that gives a customer a reason to tell their agent, next time, to choose you.
Become the default
McKinsey describes a growing core of deep AI users whose habits are getting stickier, and advises brands to protect them by becoming their default choice. Agents follow instructions. The brands that win repeat business will be the ones customers name.
That doesn’t happen through a better ad. It happens through a post-purchase experience that makes a customer feel known.
It’s worth keeping perspective. The shift is real, but it’s early. Agentic checkout is still a small share of total sales, and even OpenAI reportedly scaled back its instant checkout plans this year because of implementation hurdles. The marketers who prepare now won’t be reacting to a finished revolution. They’ll be shaping it.
The customers you win this holiday season, through an agent or otherwise, are the ones you most need to keep.
Your customers have agents now. So should your marketing team.
Written by: Pini Yakuel
